Fewer Moving Parts
by Nitlon
Summary: Means fewer broken pieces. AU, Zemyx. Maybe this was the best he could hope for. After all, it wasn't like a relationship was ever going to bring him any joy. He may as well make somebody else feel something.
1. But you don't understand:

A/N: So, this is whiny and sort of urban, I guess. There's nothing interesting to say about it. I guess, read it? Oh, and instead of normal quotations, I think most of the time I'll be using these individual six-word memoirs. Right. Yes. Good. Okay.

Someone across the street is endeavoring to set off fireworks. This will end with someone having one fewer eye than he or she started out with, y/n?

* * *

I threw away my teddy bear.  
- **Margot Loren**

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* * *

**

He couldn't feel things. They would penetrate the surface, and no deeper. The abandonment of a friend was a sort of passing worry, taken selfishly to mean he was not entertaining enough. He could never find it in himself to care. His insides were the surface of Mars.

Zexion was a sociopath.

Not a dangerous one.

But he sat at home and read books which went in one end and out the other, in a bored attempt to find something that might stick to the insides of the wind tunnel that was his mind. He had no need to manipulate people. He wasn't demonic. Maybe he wasn't even a sociopath. Either way, his apathy was astounding. He hated melodrama and people who needed to vent. It was somewhat insensitive, he knew, to call people silly for not dealing with their problems privately and silently, but he didn't and couldn't understand them. Passion did nothing but embarrass him at movies. "God, those two need to get a hold of themselves."

He laughed at the existentialists who tooted that there was no meaning to life, more at the people who said it was futile to look. They did not believe what they said. If they did, they'd be like him: listless and bored and tired. Mind swelled, mind bruised, mind useless. He had made it a game to find goals for himself, but so far the only goal he could find was to find a good goal.

The truth was something he liked, to an extent. Facts did not cease to exist if they were ignored. They could be discovered again at any moment. He liked that idea, but not an awful lot. It was this literal-mindedness which made him so bad at English class. He couldn't shake the feeling that everyone was just projecting their own beliefs onto the words. And then they took any hints they assumed they found and twisted them to fit no matter how they had to bend.

Which was just it. He could find something wrong with anything.

The bath was starting to cool down. He sighed and slid further into the tub, letting his hair float up around him. The film of water tickled the skin around his mouth and nose. That was nice. Sort of.

Not…really.

He was spending a lot of time underwater recently. That traffic cop had mentioned something about being a scuba diver. Zexion decided to give it a try. If someone else liked it, he might like it just as much. He stuck all but his nose under the water, so he could hear nothing but the blood rushing in his ears, and felt the film of water tickle his skin. Being underwater was so…quiet. So he let tendrils of hair swirl and tugged them under to see the strands dissipate. But this did not work.

Perhaps if he could find something he was good at. So far, all he was good at was moping and English class. Moping came naturally. English meant lying, using words and insincere phrases spat out about the meaning of the author's careful organization of events and telling of thoughts. The teachers gobbled it up greedily and wrote book recommendations on the sides of his papers. He'd read somewhere that sociopaths were amazing liars. Maybe this was why essays came so easy to him. He just had to take what life had taught him to feel and spit it back out of his mouth. He didn't have to mean any of it. Or even understand it.

Science was something he did like. He was terrible at it, though. Barely scraped by as average, but he liked it in principle in that it did make sense to him. His like wasn't an active one. It was more of a healthy respect.

The bath was barely lukewarm anymore, so he ran a bar of soap over each of his arms and washed them off once more just to feel the sensation of going from soft dirty skin to the rough, clean kind. He unplugged the drain and got out, wrapping a towel around his waist, running a hand through his hair and glancing at his reflection in the mirror. He wondered if he should brush the grayish mop. Running a finger through it so it parted sideways, staring at the wet strings of hair, he decided it wasn't worth it anyways.

He kept a hand around the towel when he walked to his room, remembering the old appreciation of the thick carpet in the hall on the second floor. He closed the door to his room, walked over to his closet, opened the door with the quiet hush of wood on rug. He hadn't bought new clothing since seventh grade. In five years his body had grown larger but his taste had grown more tired, and he no longer cared that his shirts were a little small and the brightest color he owned was a sort of dead dull blue. He had thrown away the soccer team shirts and the ones with the slogans. They struck up conversations he couldn't perpetuate or support.

So he put on a fraying black shirt and dark brown cargo pants, and a sweatshirt over that because it was cold out today, and put no more thought to the thing.

"Zexion!" his mother called from somewhere downstairs.

"What?" She tended to ruin his moods. He knew he was being a teenager about it, but he couldn't help thinking the worst of her at times, of her unobservant tendencies and the way her emotions would dictate her behavior. A bad day had her snippy and cruel.

"Are you finished in the bathroom?"

Of course he was finished in the bathroom. He'd taken his clothes out and drained the tub and turned off the lights. How could he not be finished? She was a professor but she never noticed anything.

"_Yeah_," he said, in a way that left little confusion that what he was really saying was more like "Are you stupid?"

He knew it would piss her off, but he said it before he could remember not to. So it was somewhat unsurprising to hear her creak slowly up the stairs one step at a time, muttering to herself about his rude tone and adding passive aggressively before she closed the door, "There's no need to be so snippy, Zexion."

There wasn't. She was right. But if he weren't related to the woman, he would hate her, roll his eyes at how she fawned over the dog and acted like a teenager and couldn't manage to understand that just because he did something didn't mean she was justified in acting the same way.

He found her hypocrisy stifling. That was the teenager talking. Most of the time she was the only thing he could muster frustration for.

With a grunt he sat down on his bed, pulling his backpack closer to look through his homework. It was so full that zipping it closed was a struggle, and unzipping it was like sliding leather pants off of someone's leg. It shouldn't have been that tight in the first place, and when the seal was released the contents burst forth like they were panting from the constraint.

His math teacher never checked the homework, so he would only do half of it, and that only after dinner. He didn't have physics tomorrow. He had to do that worksheet for Chinese, which wouldn't take him more than half an hour, and English was marking up some photocopied passage from a story and history was…studying. Fuck history. So many people were famous he didn't know half their names.

He was feeling one of those frequent Zexionic urges to be seen, for no reason other than that he wanted to be taken out of context. Since his sister had left for college the idea of family dinners had somewhat lessened in discipline, so if he went out for half an hour and "forgot" to come back for an additional hour after that he doubted his parents would get all too mad at him.

"Mom, I'm going to the coffee shop."

"Do you have money?"

"Yeah, I have some left over from before." He didn't have more than seventy-five cents on him, but he wasn't leaving the house for the sake of a cup of overpriced tea. He checked his appearance in the mirror, because he was objective. The idea of going out was that he was no longer Zexion, the high school kid going through senior slump with an interest in interests and a childish mother, but that kid with the dark, funny-cut hair wearing pants with chains in and a sweatshirt carrying around the autobiography of a no-name zoologist. He fancied he was an interesting-looking person, at least, and he wanted to control what he did to control how he was perceived. Quiet boy who sat outside and read his nerdy book. He would smile at people.

* * *

Zexion never technically made it to the coffee shop (not that he'd had his heart set on there in the first place). He ended up walking to the somewhat more pretentious part of the city, away from the suburbs and toward the arts college and the two music conservatories, where all the restaurants had French names and every other twenty-something guy had a guitar on his back. He'd taken cello lessons at the nearest conservatory for almost eight years by now (no reason, anymore, but it had seemed like such an exciting idea at ten). Played in a few of the orchestras there after a while, and had gotten used to waiting outside to be picked up by his parent or his sister.

On either side of the stairs leading into the building (fuck but it was a grand building, with marble in the halls and thick red carpeting and gold filigree on the seats in the concert hall, and still managed to seem depressing) was a stone wall, starting the height of the first step and continuing on to shield the stairs until they ended. He hopped up on one of these, careful to avoid the cigarette butts near the drain, and cracked open his book.

Autobiographies were good for reading. At least, the first half always was, before they got into the stories of their current professions. He liked the parts where they talked about school and college. All the stories began to sound similar after a while: they glossed over grade school in thirty pages, made no mention of drama or dating or worrying over grades. College was a little more detailed, meeting so-and-so and something about their future wives or husbands or whatever. More often than not, the authors skirted around the fact that they hadn't been able to choose majors. They scavenged for things. "I was always asking for an ant farm as a child, so I knew I'd be an entomologist!" Yeah, right. Anyone who wants an ant farm is an entomologist.

Zexion didn't want anything. Did that mean he had to be an accountant?

He hardly focused on the books. He was out in the open, perched carefully on a stone wall in an artsy place with young, idealistic people who might be looking at him. So he was shallow. He wanted, at least for the sake of his own convenience, to understand how people worked, and the conversations around him could help, sometimes. It had taken him until he was thirteen to understand that television was not really indicative of reality. The sad thing was that he just regurgitated the sympathetic crap he read in books in real life and people assumed he was a nice and caring person.

A quick glance around provided him with theater kids parading their colorful clothing down the sidewalks, a student parking his car by the curb, a bored traffic cop, a man with a box of refills for the vending machine entering the dorm building opposite.

The traffic cop was the same one that had said something about scuba diving last time. He was always just _around_. The only time the guy had said anything to Zexion was last week, when he'd been reading a book about Cousteau. "You like fish?" Zexion had nodded, raised his eyebrows, and scanned the crowd of cars for his mother's for the look of the thing. "Hey, me too. Actually, I'm big on scuba diving. You ever done it?" A shake of the head. At Zexion's unresponsiveness, the guy had smiled awkwardly and turned to have a conversation with someone else.

It would have been creepy if the cop hadn't been in his early twenties, probably just out of the police academy or whatever. Old guys talking to eighteen-year-old boys was weird. Young guys was just camaraderie.

A familiar face somewhat ruined the feeling of being a stranger with no connotation. But the self-absorbed part of Zexion wanted him to come over and talk, to show he was the kind of guy who could talk to cops. At the same time there was something completely nerve-wracking about even the idea.

He was…an objectively attractive guy. His hair was a little wonky, and obviously dyed blond, but he smiled a lot. Zexion noticed this all the time. For a policeman, he sure never scowled. But it was kind of unnerving, because you couldn't talk to a policeman the way you could talk to someone else. He always felt like he had to prove he wasn't breaking the law.

But it didn't matter. Zexion shouldn't have worried. There was no reason for the traffic cop to come over and talk to him, anyways. If he were a traffic cop, he wouldn't go around talking to random strangers.

"Hey, it's the book kid!"

Then again, Zexion generally assumed that there was no reason for anyone to talk to him other than to ask about homework assignments. Assuming anything else was just hope and whining, and he was usually right, anyways.

"…hi?"

The traffic cop laughed and came to stand closer. "Am I interrupting? You didn't seem like you were reading all too closely."

"No." He wanted to know the guy's motives. "It's fine." Do you need something? What do you want from me?

The cop tilted his blond head a little to the side, still smiling, but daunted with a curious confusion. What would I want from you?

All people ever do is want things.

"You were reading a book about fish last time, right? What's it today?"

Not wanting to answer, Zexion only held up the book so the cop could see the cover. See? Nothing illegal. I'm a good, law-abiding citizen. I'm smart, too, I read these sorts of books for fun. Acknowledge this.

"Ants? Cool. You like ants, I guess?" He got a little closer now, taking a couple of steps up to lean against the wall and smile right at Zexion. What did he _want_? Zexion couldn't _give_ him anything.

"Not really."

He laughed, a good, copper sort of laugh, the kind that would turn big and booming as he got fat with age. "So why are you reading that book?"

Zexion shrugged, feeling more than done with this conversation. He was ready for the guy to leave again. He was disappointing. He asked boring questions for the sake of conversation.

"You don't know?"

_Stop putting words in my mouth, you bastard. I know. I know why I'm reading the stupid fucking book, okay? It would just take way too long to explain, so drop it._ A small human part of him inside curled up and hardened around its edges, his vulnerability smashed. He was put off by the strangest things.

"I guess I just wanted to." If the traffic cop was insinuating that he was an indecisive teenager, then fuck him.

"Ah. Sorry, didn't mean to piss you off there." Piss him off? Yeah, he had been, but was that really something you just acknowledged out in the open like that? With a total stranger on a street corner? Well. It wasn't like Zexion knew any better, anyways. He could only assume it was normal, or it was different for the city, or it was different for the police.

He just couldn't function like that.

Zexion was a sociopath.

He didn't understand when people said you shouldn't do certain things, like talk about parties in front of people who hadn't been invited.

"It's fine."

"So, you a student here?"

"Yeah."

It occurred to him, after he muttered in the affirmative, that the traffic cop probably meant a college student. He'd lied to a policeman. Good going, Zexion. Go ahead, try correcting yourself, see how smart you look then.

"Cool. I have some friends who go here, so it's a good thing I get this shift all the time, huh?" He laughed again.

"Oh. That's cool. It must be nice to have your friends around while you work," Zexion offered, getting in some practice with the whole small talk thing. But no, he couldn't even do that right, could he? As soon as he tried, the cop fell silent.

"Well," he started, at which point Zexion felt an irrational spark of irritation at the correction, "The problem is that they've always got classes around this time…evening classes to avoid morning classes, you know? Lazy music majors." Chuckling.

"Oh. Haha."

He grinned at Zexion, sideways, and scratched his neck. "But hey, at least I've got my new buddy…uh…"

He stared at him blankly for a while, letting the man think. "What was your name?" Oh.

What? Why did he need to know Zexion's name? Why were they friends? They'd barely shared a conversation. Did that make them friends? Who decided? He must have been joking.

"Zexion."

"Right. I've got my buddy Zexion to keep me entertained!"

"Oh. …sorry." He didn't know why he apologized right then.

"You're a real quiet guy, you know that?"

"What?" He'd heard fine, but hadn't taken the time to process the information; it seemed like the right thing to say. People did that all the time. "I'm going to go grocery shopping tomorrow." "What?" "I said I'm going to go – " "Oh, no, it's fine, I heard you." That sort of thing.

"Never mind. It's not important." The cop yawned and swiveled his head around to look at the source of the honking horn behind him, then turned back. "I'm Demyx. Not that you _asked_." He laughed, presumably to show he was joking. Zexion let himself wonder what it meant to have a friend who wasn't in high school. Not that he did.

He wouldn't see this guy again – or at least not talk to him, probably – but for now it made him feel important, having a police officer stand there and talk to him like he was something worth talking to.

Zexion was a sociopath.

He didn't understand how people worked.

He was eighteen and he didn't know the difference between banter and flirting.


	2. I've been trying to save somebody

A/N: I remember this one story I wrote I updated every single day. 1500 words a day. Oh man, were those the days. Well, two and a half months later, there's still no discernible plot and you're welcome hi. I'm having fun with this story. Probably this is bad, but I still haven't quite worked out which way I want it to end. Well, spontaneity never hurt anyone. Except for the people it did, of course, but that's neither here nor there.

HAVE FUN, KIDS. DON'T RUN WITH SCISSORS.

Disclaimer: Pants...pants, pants pants pants...pants. To quote an acquaintance.

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Thought I would have more impact.  
- **Kevin Clark**

* * *

Zexion had an irrational respect for people older than he was. If they were in college, he thought they must know more simply on principle, by virtue of having lived longer.

So it made him happy to have some sort of communication with a guy old enough to be a cop, even if he was one of those people who went around giving out traffic tickets and telling the neighbors of cranky old people that there was a complaint about the noise. It made Zexion feel some little bit of important.

His world was so numb anything could shake it. He was put off when people wanted to have a conversation with him that wasn't asking him for help with schoolwork. To the point where he didn't respond to his name when he heard it being called.

He was melodramatic that way, wallowing in self-pity.

Zexion cleared his throat and tried to ignore the funny sad ache in his stomach, sliding his notebook out of his backpack and taking a pencil from the small pocket in the front (he fumbled around for a little – there were only three pencils and a pen in there, and one of the pencils didn't work) before opening to a blank page.

And in came the bio teacher, this fat, wobbling mass of woman – in reality maybe only twenty, twenty-five pounds overweight – who never quite managed to teach anything or earn anyone's respect. She was the sort of woman who had a degree in education, not a degree in biology, and so treated her twelfth-graders like first-graders with coloring in diagrams and writing 'compare-and-contrast' paragraphs. She made them do the 'comprehension checks' at the end of each section in the textbook.

Biology was more time for him to spend in his head, really.

_You'd think at least the science teachers wouldn't be crackpots? Whatever. _

They'd even finished with all the interesting biology for the year. It was like she'd given up. They were spending an entire unit on marine fucking ecology. Zexion learned a lot of unnecessary things and one of them was that sea otters ate sea urchins. _Fascinating. Really._

He took so few notes in this class that he made them all in perfect, spidery script – his real handwriting was messy and inconsistent, but the notebook didn't know that – and after a while of "But what happens if there are too many _otters_, Mrs. Brunwein? But what if you have two _kinds_ of sea urchins?" he started doodling next to the words. His sea urchin was somewhat demented. The spines were long and jagged and stuck out at awkward angles from the tiny black body of the animal. The whole page, overall, was really very pretty. You could have put it in a fantasy field guide to the ocean.

"Hey, Zexion. Zexion."

The absolute worst and most annoying and ridiculous thing about school was Axel Rhodes. The stupid. Fucker. How they were friends was a mystery. Zexion wondered if he was the only one in the group who couldn't stand Axel.

"Did I miss anything? I kinda zoned out for fifteen minutes. Did she say any of it was gonna be on the test?" he whispered conspiratorially. Axel was sort of always in your face that way, breathy, and those _eyes_.

_If you're so worried about grades then maybe you should pay attention in class __**once in a while**__, moron._

"Here," Zexion muttered, handing the redhead his notebook.

"I can't read your handwriting, though!"

Oh, Axel Rhodes was an ungrateful little noodle. He made it a point to go around looking gift horses in the mouth.

"Just pay attention for now." He was in a somewhat miserable mood. Zexion really did like to think of himself as detached. He was, maybe, a little too affected by bad kids' films where everyone spends their time talking about the hidden potential of the introvert. Maybe psychological issues made him more interesting. _Poor Zexion, unable to feel! _Maybe he acted this way just so that someone would tell him to stop.

Axel was, of course, already half asleep again, the skin of his cheek drawn up where it rested on his fist, hid hooded eyes locked precariously on the white board. Senior slump got to everybody, but Axel had been like this since sophomore year. It wouldn't have been so annoying if Axel didn't later complain and blame his grades on his teachers.

Zexion slid his notebook back over onto his desk to doodle on it a little more. Two periods left after this, just two. And thank God, because honestly, fuck Wednesdays. The bus was always late, the drunken sidewalk man _always_ made an appearance on the subway stairs, and he'd forgotten his iPod at home today so he'd have to sit there pretending to read a book, trying to ignore other people's conversations.

The day pretty much went on as planned – Chinese was nothing more than a dull exercise in restaurant vocabulary. In English he said something and apparently used one of their vocabulary words, to much of the class's amusement. Nobody had anything to say other than that, naturally. "Does anyone want to reply to Zexion's comment?" Fuck no. As if they ever did.

He took the long way home, walking, the way that involved justsohappening to pass by the music school where the probably mindless – but still older – traffic cop sometimes stood around. He hated music schools. Conservatories. Whatever. They were filled to bursting with cruel stereotypes and people determined to prove they were better than you at something. They stared like nobody else but them belonged there.

The traffic cop wasn't there, and Zexion felt stupid for taking the long way home on the off-chance he was.

But he tried again the next day. He overheard the guy's name – Demmicks? Something like that – but they didn't talk, not a word.

It went on like this. Every day he more seriously considered not walking by the conservatory – because – because if you try you might fail and, and the less pain you have the happier you will be – but always ended up going. He was frightened the cop wouldn't be there. He was more frightened the cop would be there and he would miss him on the one day he chose not to go.

Ultimately, it took five tries.

Wow, Zexion.

But on that fifth try, they spoke, and the cop seemed – _glad_ to speak to him, actually, which was – surprising. "Hey, hey, Zexion, right?"

He got tapped on the shoulder. "Am I wrong?"

"Oh!" He hadn't meant to jerk away from the touch, but he couldn't help it. "Yeah, hi."

The cop (oh, shit, he _had_ told Zexion his name, hadn't he) didn't seem at all put off by his behavior, but hey. "Man, I was wondering if I'd get to talk to you again! You haven't been here all week!"

...okay. "Yeah," he laughed, "I've just been getting home kind of late." Make it sound like he had a life. Good, yes, progress.

"Really? Why?"

"End of the year and stuff. Like, final projects and research at the library. It's kind of stupid. I've been doing good enough to pass all my classes even if I fail the finals." 'Doing good'? Stupid, stupid, stupid; superheroes do good.

But bless his blond head, he didn't notice, and just nodded understandingly. "That's awesome. Oh, God, I remember in high school taking the finals at the end of the year. It was just the worst thing because instead of two months to earn a grade you get, what, two hours, you know?" He laughed. "I was never too good in school. Always had to work for what came easy to everyone else."

A little brown bird flew into the middle of the road and flew off again a second later. Zexion waited for just a second before replying. "I think everybody feels like that sometimes." He tensed his shoulders, trying to work out this odd and developing soreness in the left, and wished he were wearing his watch.

"You think so?"

Another pause, though he didn't even really use it to work out what he was trying to say. "Yeah. I guess I sort of think that maybe we – we've all got these...thoughts that we all think. Uh. No, I mean..." laughing the way he'd heard teenage girls on TV do, he tried to look imploring. "You know what I mean?"

Demyx! That's right. His name. Demyx replied disappointingly. "I don't think so," he laughed. "But hey, I'm pretty awful at school anyways. It was just never a good environment for me, you know?"

That's a lie. You're a grownup. They're good at everything. They have to be or they don't let you become a grownup. It's why they're making Zexion go to college.

"So that's why you joined um, you joined...police...school?" He waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah." It was the weirdest day out, too, and Zexion stared pointedly at the air. It was sweating, almost drizzling, just like it was almost cloudy with a chance of sunset down Gainsbourg Boulevard, where all the big trucks came.

"The academy, you mean?" God, shut up, stop laughing. He was wrong. So? People were wrong sometimes! Zexion pursed his lips and smiled tightly.

"Exactly. That's what I meant. They don't teach us no fancy words like _academy_ in school no more," he said with a smirk.

"Hey, why're you all talkative today, anyways?"

"What?"

"Well, the last time we talked you were all angry at me."

Zexion thought back to their last conversation. It had been quick, minutes, and – what had it been about? All he could remember was the vague excitement of an adult with authority and experience thinking he was worth spending time talking to. Books. They'd talked about the book he was reading and Zexion had – oh.

"Yeah," he confessed. "I'd been having a sort of bad day. I know you're not supposed to take that out on other people, but..." He had, of course, been having a perfectly fine day. But it's easiest, with people, to come up with excuses for not being a good child.

"Sometimes you just can't help it. I get that. Me, I've always thought of myself as sort of a peaceful guy. Mellow and shit." He snorted. "So long as you don't vent your frustrations by robbing your local shopping mall, Zexion, I think we will get along _spuh-lendidly_," he finished, swinging an arm around Zexion's shoulders. A second or two of somewhat stunned silence later, he checked his watch and took his arm away abruptly. "Oh man, I gotta check back in and switch shifts with this other guy. Uh..."

"Yes?" He watched Demyx expectantly. The dark blue uniform – the hat especially – didn't seem to suit him at all. There were still creases in the sides of the pants where they'd been lovingly ironed.

"I dunno, you're probably busy." Before Zexion could interject (not that he had a clue where this was supposed to be going), "But if you're not we could meet up at Music Espresso in like fifteen minutes?"

"Oh!" The hell? "Oh, yeah, sure. I mean I can't stay for too long, but yeah, why not." He coughed. "Where is that?"

"I thought you went to school here?"

He froze and felt a little squeeze in his heart. "Around here, yeah."

"Right." Demyx smiled at him (did cops do that? What a weirdly unjaded guy. He must have been new) and pointed down the street. "You just take a left down there and it's maybe the third or fourth shop on the right side of the road. Can't miss it. The S in 'music' is a treble clef on the sign."

* * *

Never say what you're thinking.

Smile back when people smile at you.

Always react when they think it's big news.

Tell people it will be fine, even if you don't really believe it.

Don't talk during speeches. Shush your friends; it's disrespectful of them.

Make sure to fawn over dogs that sniff the palm of your hand; everybody thinks dogs are cute.

Don't wish for too much.

Only do things within your ability.

You can't expect them to know about the tiny cold lump in the middle of your head.

* * *

He wasn't a particularly sad guy, even. Not really. He was lonely as fuck sometimes, but what teenager wasn't? He figured he was pretty lucky, having a group of friends that went to movies together and sent each other funny news articles in email. He got what he needed to out of school (how to take a multiple choice test, how to make a teacher like you and grade your essays accordingly), and he had a bright enough future ahead of him as long as he could figure out something to do.

It was just. It was just that. He was so completely lacking in – _something_, and it seemed far too late ever to get it back and - and even if he did, he wouldn't ever appreciate it fully.

He was terrified of being judged. Of course he was. Everybody was.

But shit if he stopped giving a damn what Demyx the Fucking Traffic Cop thought of him. Because really, what the hell did this guy have to offer? He was so fucking _happy_. Holy _shit_ was it ridiculous. He operated on a completely different wavelength and expected Zexion to keep up.

"It's pretty annoying though, you know? I mean, I'm trying to have an honest conversation with this guy, and seriously, every time I try he tells me about his conquests. Because yeah, that's not awkward, right? I want to hear about you making out with this chick." He made a face into his cocoa (it's June, dude, nobody drinks cocoa in June but whatever) and grinned.

The coffee shop was unbearably music themed. The little pastries he could see in the glass window had sixteenth note runs and treble clefs etched lovingly in dark chocolate. The names of all the drinks and meals were just as fucking adorable and alliterative and made even less sense. The crowning glory would probably be "Prokofiev's Potato Salad," though.

Dark wood chairs were two to a small, black fiberglass table. Pictures of famous musicians hung on the walls, signed. A staircase led somewhere – to a second floor or to rented out offices, probably, but he'd never work up the courage to check it out regardless. The lights were all different paper shapes around the bulbs, yellow and dimmed. The weirdest thing was that they were just playing the radio quietly over the loudspeakers; he'd expected here, of all places, to have classical music. But it was top twenty and indistinguishable techno beats. Oh well.

"Ugh, yeah," Zexion wrinkled his nose. "I mean, I know I'm a guy, but that doesn't mean my libido is the ruling force in my life. I just don't care that much about who so-and-so sucked face with at a party. But it's not like I can say that." After declining to order anything himself, Demyx had gone on to hail him some kind of Oreo cake thing and tea, claiming he was glad enough for the company to pay for it. It made Zexion feel a little guilty for being so completely, utterly, and purposefully devoid of personality, but oh well. His loss.

Clucking his tongue, Demyx leaned back in his chair, fiddling with the place where his shirt tucked into his uniform pants (were you allowed to wear the uniform off duty? Zexion had some misgivings). "Oh man, though. Don't you want to though, sometimes? Just tell people right to their face what you're thinking?" He held up a hand. "Before you say what I know you're gonna, yeah, I know. Shit would totally fall apart if we always said what we were thinking. It would get totally awkward and frustrating and embarrassing and stuff. But still."

"Yeah."

He was proud to have lasted this long into the conversation without falling completely silent, and figured now was a good enough time to do it. He glanced outside, just to check and see how dark it was, to see who was walking around out there. _Hey, yeah, I'm having a casual conversation with a police officer. That makes me important, doesn't it?_ Such a loser. Shit, Zexion.

The sun was just setting behind one of the buildings, halfway spilling over the top. _Flash!_ He shifted, and golden-orange light erupted in his vision, blinding him temporarily. He shook his head and looked down so the building covered it up. Sat up a little again, though, because it was so pretty.

"What about you?" Demyx asked suddenly.

"What about me?"

The cop laughed and took the plastic spoon out of his cup, licking it clean before setting it down on a napkin. A little cocoa was still left curled in the dip of the bell. He focused on that while Demyx talked. "Sorry, I felt like you were just totally placating me. Like 'uhuh, sure, Demyx, whatever you say'."

"No, no, I agree with you. I mean there's just a ton of stuff that people – act like it just isn't there. There are always things I'd like to say to people, or things I'd like to do, or ask...but I don't because – "

"Because you're not supposed to."

"...yeah."

Zexion sighed through his nose, wondering idly about the time. Had he promised to do something he forgot about? He sure hoped not, because he didn't feel like going home. This cop would tire of him soon, so maybe he'd just go down to the park or something. Zexion had four books in his backpack, all unfinished.

Demyx had distracting eyes. He probably wore contacts, because that shade of blue looked absolutely nothing but synthetic. It was like a little kid had looked at an entire color palette of blues and aquamarines and jsut picked the brightest, most obnoxious paint color for his room. "Hey, deal, okay? I'm gonna tell you something totally random about myself and then you return the favor. Even if you think your thing isn't as serious or is way more serious than my thing, just say it if you want to, 'cause I'm gonna."

Third conversation with this guy and this was what he resorted to? The fuck? ...Okay?

"Uh...yeah. I mean, yeah, sure."

"You seem totally weirded out."

"No, I guess it's just what you said." He frowned at his Oreo brownie thing and stifled his inevitable childish excitement at the prospect of saying something about himself besides the college he planned on attending and what he thought he'd major in. Demyx was right; there were things you didn't say. So when the guy said them it was a little off-putting.

"Uh-huh. Yeah, I phrased it pretty vaguely. Never mind, you'll get it after I go." He cleared his throat. That wasn't, of course, was Zexion meant, but whatever. You learned to let things go. "Alright. Uh...oh man, this was such a good idea until I got to this part. Let me think."

A long pause. So long that Zexion started listening to the waiters conversing behind him, having given up on the present conversation.

"I ran away as a kid. Not like the five-year-old kind of running away where you go hide behind your neighbor's house. I was maybe ten or something." He cleared his throat, and Zexion caught his eyes with some kind of ambivalent interest stirring in the very bottom of his stomach. "And I was so sick of my older sister getting all this attention – she was going away to college, then, so it was understandable but it's not like _I_ understood that – I basically convinced myself that...I don't remember. I don't think it was the whole 'they'll miss me when I'm gone' rationale, but it might've been. I got pretty far for a kid, you know. I took the thirty-something dollars I'd stored up from allowance which is like a freaking _fortune_ when you're ten, and I headed for the place I took karate lessons, since there was a travel agency really near it. Which is like a good forty-minute walk for a ten-year-old!

"But, you know, I was still ten years old, right? So I got totally distracted. I sounded like a tambourine when I walked, by the way, since like a half of those thirty dollars were in quarters in my pockets. Anyways, there's this sort of foresty island thing in the middle of one of the roads, and it was a pretty decent size, so I decided I'd make a camp there. I never did boy scouts but I'd watched the nature channel enough so I could pretend that the thing I was making was a decent fort."

Demyx paused and drew his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open to check the time and putting it back. He started to roll the spoon back and forth, nervously. "My parents totally freaked. They almost called the police but then my dad found me and took me home. I think the worst part wasn't really the whole being scared and alone thing so much as I really didn't want the lecture that I knew was coming for me as soon as I got home, but it never did. Actually _that's_ the worst part, because for like three days I was waiting for them to gather their rage and give me a good talking to, but they didn't. I heard them yelling at each other about what to do but even that was only maybe ten minutes and then they were fine again.

"I guess they just forgot."

Something about the way this forward blond stranger said those words just sucker punched Zexion right in the gut. He didn't think the cop even noticed, was the kicker, he just went right on with his story.

"But yeah, I went for like a week tip-toeing around everywhere and pretending my parents couldn't see me so I didn't get yelled at." A long, whooshing exhalation. "I've never told anyone that story before. I feel like it's way too serious to be told for shit and giggles, yeah?"

"I guess so, yeah," Zexion agreed, "It's like it's too sad for casual exchange but too silly for a heart-to-heart."

"Sad? Really? I never thought of it that way."

_Oh, yeah, that's nice, Mr. Police Officer sir, please piss on my attempt to connect to your story._

Zexion shrugged, though, because he was being childish and it was very easy for him to let go of something he wasn't really feeling at all in the first place. "I guess it depends on your personal experience. We've all got different tastes."

"Yeah, just like...man, there's a reason I failed biology. What's it called, the thing where – you know, if your personality depends on if you were just born like that or if you were raised to think a certain way?"

"Uh." Nature versus nurture, but he'd learned a while ago that pointing out to someone older than you that they were wrong and you were right was a quick way to get shoveled into the 'snooty and unapproachable teenager' pigeonhole. "I don't know. But I do know what you're talking about."

He'd been walking around so much lately his feet were going to fall off. Zexion decided this quite calmly, having let his mind drift.

"But – hey! No way, no way. Your turn."

"My turn what?" Obviously he knew what they were talking about, but it didn't hurt to get the reassurance. Just in case.

"You have to tell me something. Whatever you want, just something you wouldn't normally tell somebody you just met. Go."

Zexion fell silent, keeping his eyes trained carefully on the bits of hair that fell over Demyx's forehead. He wondered if the traffic cop knew they were there, or if he even gave a shit. Well. "Is it okay if my thing is also about when I was a kid?" he asked, suddenly and – curiously apprehensive. He mulled over the story he'd been told. A little kid who wanted an adventure in a forest. Who seemed to understand adults at ten better than Zexion did at eighteen. Weird.

"Yeah, of course, just shoot."

Drumming his fingers on the table, he pretended to give the topic some thought. He wondered how he ought to present the whole thing – laughing, smiling, oh those kids? How would Demyx want to hear it? Zexion didn't feel a thing.

"My parents thought something was wrong with me when I was little," he said at length. "Well. My mother did." And if this scared off the traffic cop and his bright smiles from across the street while Zexion waited to be picked up from orchestra rehearsals, then so be it. Zexion didn't get too terribly attached to things. "I didn't talk enough for a kid. And I would become – far too focused on – on one particular thing for too long. Children usually have pretty short attention spans. But I would stick to one thing for a week at a time."

Demyx's pointer finger was tracing the same pattern across the table over and over. You wouldn't think a cop could have piano fingers. "And?"

"It's not really a – story."

"Tell it anyways." There was a low note of authority in that voice that tickled the base of Zexion's spine.

He was making far too big a deal about this. Such a drama queen, Zexion.

He lost sight of the ends of his sentences halfway through them. How much to betray? How to have his mother seen? "My mom just...thought I was...autistic, I think. It got pretty bad. I wasn't able to explain it to her, not...well enough. She took me to see a few doctors when I was five, maybe six years old – just starting school, that is." It was a good touch, having his words wrought with pauses, making him sound so terribly insecure. That was, after all, how people did it on TV. "I knew why I was there, on some level. I was the perfect shy kid in front of them. Came home with a clean bill of health every time. I think it made her angry. She must have thought I just didn't like her."

Demyx frowned. "But you knew why she thought something was wrong with you? Why didn't you act like that around her?"

"Too much effort," Zexion shrugged. "I was annoyed by adults in general. They...never seemed to take me seriously. Which makes sense, but when I was five, I was resentful about it. I could tell I was being humored, and I didn't like it."

It was so curious, the way Demyx seemed truly and honestly interested in this story, nodding his head and making affirmative grunts and puzzled looks at all the right junctures. Zexion wondered if he, too, looked at what people did and copied it.

There were clear undercurrents of meaning in Zexion's story, however exaggerated. _Do not humor me. I would rather be left alone than be condescended upon._

"Eventually I didn't bother at all. I remember in the dentist's office as a kid – I never responded to her questions with anything but 'yes' or 'no' or 'I don't know'. She told my father I had a cavity and said she hadn't wanted to tell me because I seemed upset by something."

He fell silent, then, and waited for the inevitable response (because what did you say to that, really, what did you say) of stuttering and probably a misplaced joke. A quick change of subject and an excuse to leave. It didn't come; the traffic cop was waiting for him to finish.

"Sorry," he said numbly. _Good going. Tell the nice friendly law enforcement officer what basically amounts to a serial killer's back story. Why don't I just go ahead and tell him I kill puppies for fun. This is just going to end __**magnificently**__. _

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

"I mean, didn't you ever have a moment where you stopped and just decided to be a kid?"

"No."

It was the way he talked to his relatives. "Haha." "Yes." "No." Usually they got the picture.

The cop drummed his fingers against the sides of his cup and wiped his eye with the corner of his palm, taking a long breath and looking at Zexion. "It's a good story," he said. "It's...that's a cool story. I've never done this before. Is this weird?"

Drizzle started to temper the heat outside, leaving tiny dark speckles on the sidewalk. He wanted to go sit in the rain. This conversation wasn't normal. He wanted to go see Axel and Lex and hell, _Marluxia_ or go babysit the thirteen-year-old next door. It wasn't normal.

"Is what weird?"

"Uh...you know. This talk. Being really honest and shit. I think we're breaking a bunch of new acquaintance taboos." What a weird thing! You didn't think of a police officer as a blond boy with such a quiver in his voice. To be honest, and he had no reason not to be with himself, Zexion was still apprehensive. This man was important to society. He wrote tickets and arrested people. He still had yet to get that hardness in his face though, the kind you saw patrolling downtown, looking around for troublesome teenagers.

"You tell me," Zexion replied calmly. Crossing his legs, he wondered how off-putting it would be to smirk, if it would make Demyx squirm. He'd changed his mind. He didn't want to come off as a bashful kid. He wanted to act like he knew what he was doing.

This seemed to give Mr. Police Officer pause. He stared at Zexion for a quiet moment and shook his head, smiling at his feet before looking back up. "You got an email address, Zexion?"

"Yes."

At which point Demyx took the ticket book out of his belt and flipped to the very back, to a couple of blank pages. He handed this to Zexion, and followed it with a ballpoint pen.

He was a sociopath but at least – at least this silly little man thought he was a grown up.

* * *

Apparently Zexion was really popular on Wednesdays, because he'd gotten three calls from the same mystery number while talking to the traffic cop. It was with some degree of hesitation that he'd called back, standing on his porch with one arm folded across his stomach.

_"Mmp. Hello?"_

"Hi?"

_"Who is this?"_

"I was hoping you could tell me who you are. You've called me three times in the last hour."

_"Oh! Zexion. Yeah, hi. It's Saix."_ Saix, the angry graduate student working for his father? Zexion had been to his dad's office a few times. He'd gotten the distinct impression, while there, that Saix had absolutely no interest in talking to a high school student. Especially one that didn't care about video games or rock bands or bad innuendo. Zexion thought it'd been quite firmly established that they were barely even acquaintances. The sort of people that would pretend they didn't see each other in a mall.

"Uh. Hi, Saix. What is it?"

_"A couple of things. Your dad said you wanted to volunteer in the lab, over the summer?"_

Well, good for his dad. School wasn't even out for at least a couple of weeks. How long, now? He wasn't anticipating leaving high school forever. He wasn't even keeping track. But dear god, we can't let Zexion the wonder child go without doing something all summer, can we? Best keep him in the eyes of the adults. He wondered what excuse his dad would use this summer – "it'll look good on your college application" was sort of moot, now.

"...yeah, sure, I guess. I mean, yes."

_"Right. So I just wanted to touch base with you about that. Oh, and if you see the Professor_," you could hear the reverence in his voice, the capitalization as if he were a children's book character, The Professor, _"Tell him I sent him the visiting researcher's schedule and I'm trying to set up meetings and stuff to keep the guy busy."_

"Oh. Is that one of the jobs you have?" It was only polite, wasn't it? To make conversation. It was a good idea to establish some kind of acquantainceship if he was going to be in the office over the summer, right?

_"Uh-huh."_ A long, painful pause, and Zexion knew, he could just tell Saix was rolling his mature, graduate-student eyes at the stupid kid. _"So, just tell him that, and I guess I'll talk to him about you being here over the summer. Bye."_

"Bye – " he'd gotten the full word in, but the click on the other end still made him feel like he was getting cut off.

Well, fine. Which was to say –

Oh well.

It was a most useful trick. _I am annoyed. I acknowledge this feeling. Good-bye, my annoyance; you are not so very large when I look at you from the outside._ Perhaps he'd gotten too used to using it.

He played the cello (quite well, or at least, well enough, since cellos were always in demand). He read autobiographies which sparked a brief and muted jealousy in him. He had a wide enough circle of friends, even if they all operated on the same wavelength of sarcasm and insincerity. He had just had coffee and an oddly-named pastry with a cop, a real, actual police officer, and they'd spoken on equal terms. Zexion had nothing to prove. He was young. He had nowhere to go but up.

It warrants saying – at eighteen years old, he was so firmly cocooned in his own self that Zexion Gillespie loved nothing at all.

* * *

A/N: 1) Yes. Gillespie.

2) So yeah, if it wasn't completely and shamelessly obvious already, this story's gonna be a lot about childhood versus adulthood and what that means and really okay, I was thinking about it and Zexion probably got like NO RESPECT around the castle on a daily basis. I mean, you get Xemnas, Xigbar, Xaldin, Vexen, Lexaeus, and then this like, little boy. Visitors must've been like "So what, is he your nephew, or...? I mean, is it safe to let him run around unsupervised?"

But still. Expect to see plenty of references to The Little Prince et al. Uh. If you keep reading, I mean.

Review? Even if you just feel like pointing out one of the many typos I'm sure are in here.


	3. I have never wished to save my own kind

A/N: ...I'm...awesome. Look at that. Not even a year between six-thousand-word installs.

...

WHATEVER I DON'T NEED YOUR SASS

P.S. Dear adorably nerdy logophiles: I know what a sociopath is. I mean, for the sake of argument, I could tell you that even diagnosed sociopaths do experience some numbed emotion and that we have yet to encounter someone who feels literally nothing emotional, but that's technically irrelevant here. It is, however, my justification that Sherlock the self-proclaimed "high-functioning sociopath" is _totally jealous_ when John Watson gets a girlfriend in the BBC Sherlock series. _So jealous you guys it's adorable._

But yeah, I dunno. How's life? Also I've been forgetting chapter title things.

* * *

**Chapter Three: A Certain Alienated Majesty**

* * *

I did ask to live backwards.  
- **Shari Bonnin**

* * *

Zexion hated sneakers, and did everything he could to avoid them going on his feet. They conjured up images of jocks and people in the gym watching your fat wiggle, and of mandatory phys ed where you barely had time to wipe the sweat off your face before the next class started. He was a boots guy. Occasionally a sandals guy, if the weather demanded it, which it didn't quite yet. Mostly boots. He liked the way they clomped on the ground, and how the leather got all wrinkly where you bent your toes.

He watched his big ugly worker-person boots peak out from under his pants while he walked, clomp-clomp over a sidewalk damp and dark with rain, and tried not to make eye contact with anybody. He was almost home by now. And almost two hours until he had to leave for rehearsal or anything, _God_ were Fridays good days. The whole damn weekend to look forward to, and he could look forward to it until he went to sleep past midnight. It had always seemed to Zexion that looking forward to things was always more fun than the thing itself.

One of the twins was out tonight. Their neighbors had two of the cutest thirteen-year-olds imaginable. Blond, blue eyes, one boy and one girl. "My little Aryan minions," Zexion said when he babysat them. He didn't like either of them too much. They were raised on Disney movies and smiley faces and the expectation that inside every cranky person is a sad person trying to get out. They were okay, though, as far as kids went – they were tolerable, and they would learn, which made them acceptable.

Plus, he got paid to sit them down in front of the TV and watch Lord of the Rings movies with them every other Saturday, so they were pretty damn useful.

Anyways, Roxas was sitting on the porch again. He did that on rainy days.

"Hey," said Zexion.

"Hey," Roxas said back. "How's life?"

"Pretty swell," he said dryly. "Half day?"

"Yeah. Dad drove me home and stuff, but I'm just hanging out down here. Nam's upstairs hogging the computer." He laughed and fiddled with the sleeves of his beloved sweatshirt. A checkered hoodie. It had thumb-holes in the sleeves, and everything. Dumb kid. He was always doing that. "It's quieter."

"Sure is." Zexion looked up at the sky, painted fluffy grey with water colors. "Anyways, I have to go eat and maybe practice before I have to go."

"You still have rehearsals? Aren't you guys done with concerts and everything?" Roxas shifted his legs on the steps, knocking his knees together.

"One more for the year . Couple weeks' time. Gonna come?"

The kid scoffed, and tossed his – admittedly impressive – mane of blond hair. "I don't have time for your juvenile antics," he said haughtily, taking on a poor British accent. "Better things to do than go and see a _high school_ orchestra in some silly concert hall."

Zexion laughed (or tried to), and wiggled his toes in his boots. He did that, sometimes, when he got impatient. Curled his toes in and out. It was like turning on the faucet of his frustration barrel. It trickled. Nobody noticed. "Right. Well, say high to the Queen for me. Me and my high school orchestra have to go practice in our red-velvet-lined, marbled concert hall like a bunch of chumps."

"Will do," Roxas grinned and fiddled with his sleeves again, hooking his thumbs through the pre-fabricated holes. He was always doing that.

* * *

Eager to rid his mouth of the taste of cafeteria pizza bagels, Zexion made his way to the fridge and opened, staring glumly at his end-of-the-week choices. There were a couple yogurts left of the maybe-if-I-stop-eating-them-Mom-will-get-the-hint-and-stop-buying-this-flavor variety. Some milk, a pint of blueberries, the usual condiments, and some lunch meats. He opened the freezer and surveyed the popsicles and ice cream and frozen dinners without relish.

"Fuck it," he muttered, closing the door again. He was too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep.

Walking past the couch, he considered channel surfing for a while, but quickly rejected the idea. It wasn't as if he'd find anything he liked, anyways. He never had before.

So he just stood there for a while, with one hand on the back of the couch and the other in his pocket, looking out the window and trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He was in one of those funny little moods he got into sometimes. More often than he wanted to, actually. He didn't not want to do anything, but he didn't want to do anything at all too strongly. He was a little magnetic ball surrounded by a thousand magnets of equal weakness, being pulled not very far in every direction.

After a few minutes he gave up, and went into the living room for his cello, as always seated on its side next to a chair and a music stand. He picked up his bow, on the seat of the chair, and used his other hand on the neck of the cello to lift it up and lean it against his shoulder. It was an undeniably comfortable position for him now. Hiding behind a cello. Still feeling listless, he flipped skipped over his folder of orchestra music and opened to a random page in an etude book.

Sixteenth notes. Ew.

He flipped to something slow and familiar in the same book. There wasn't much of a demand for cello solos in the real world, just a ham of steady background beats or counter-melodies. He was biased, of course, but there was something soothing about the sound a cello made, something that wasn't in a violin. It was just darker, he guessed. It wasn't as showy. It was a sound perfectly ready to take the backseat and silent-hero its way through a string duet.

Fuck the tempo, and fuck the dynamic markings; nobody was listening. He went as slow as he pleased, and made it as loud as he pleased – not that much pleased him about it, but it was easier than monitoring his sound. He didn't even bother tuning or anything.

He didn't really like the cello that much. It was just okay. The thing had grown on him, because if you were gonna spend so much of your life on something, you might as well learn to enjoy it as much as you can. But it didn't hold a special place.

By the time he got the end of the piece, he was barely paying any attention. He held the low G for a fraction of the time he was meant to, annoyed with the 'big finish' effect it gave off, and just started doing absent arpeggios. His teacher would have berated him endlessly for playing anything like that – like he was reading the words in a book without processing what they meant – but she wasn't here, and it didn't matter. How could he play with feeling when he didn't know what he was supposed to feel? It was classical fucking music, Jesus.

He shook his head and put the cello in its case, lugging the thing to lean against a shelf next to the door for when he had to leave.

Just in time to see the small pocket of his backpack buzz and hear the ring of his phone. He unzipped the pocket and flipped the thing open to read a new text message from Axel.

_'fuuuuuuuck. btw, what was w/ you today?'_

With him? The two days since coffee with the traffic cop had been as much of a blur as anything else. He hadn't said or done anything unusual. He hadn't even had an original conversation. He replied quickly:

_'1) What? 2) Also what.'_

Sitting down on his couch, Zexion waited for a response. He took a picture of the corner of the ceiling and the little spider crawling up the wall and set it to his background just because by the time the reply came.

_'1) did you hear a/b yuffie? 2) you were cranky'_

With a snort and a disbelieving shake of his head, he closed the phone and tossed it on the couch cushions next to him, propping his head on his hand and staring out the window. The sky was finally getting a little darker. He hated when the weather did this – got cloudy for days and days on end and didn't rain. He wished it would already, just to get it over with. Sometimes when it rained, he fancied he would go outside and sit down somewhere and get absolutely soaking wet and wait until the rain stopped. When he stood up, there would be a little Zexion-shaped dry spot on the concrete or porch or grass where he'd been sitting, as a testament to how long he'd sat there.

But that would, of course, simply not do in the Gillespie household.

If he so much as walked home in the rain with an umbrella, he was firmly assured by his mother that he would catch a cold and die immediately. Wasn't only her, of course; he just liked to pick on her. Everyone he'd ever seen fell to fits when it started to rain and they were outside – the obvious reaction, it seemed, was to cover your head and bolt indoors.

It seemed that way with an awful lot of things. Hair in food (what was so terribly gross, when you thought about it? Hair got washed better and touched less stuff than a person's hands), and coughing into your hand, and all the little social navigations of the train. He just didn't feel the need to say 'ew, gross!' if he found a hair on his pizza. He'd just pick it off and continue eating.

Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered.

And yet, rain on your head was an unmitigated disaster. Being a cokehead who hung out around the back fence of the school, laughing and seeing things through glazed eyes and taunting the pretty girls, that was part of growing up. But even they would run inside when it started to rain, wouldn't they, even if the evidence would evaporate from their heads in a few minutes?

He didn't understand how the world worked.

He was so immured in his own self, Zexion sometimes thought, that he would still go as a child goes.

Zexion was a sociopath. Society was unwilling to reveal itself to him.

* * *

He couldn't help but tense up every time his mom came home, because even that was an ordeal. As soon as that door opened, the jingle of keys being fumbled by clumsy fingers heard, he would dash upstairs and pretend he'd been in his room the whole time. If he could open his laptop up, or get a book or something, it would all look perfectly innocent. Not that she'd bother to check.

"Hello-o! Is anybody home?" came her voice.

"I'm up here, Mom," Zexion said.

"Alright, just checking!"

Clank, thump, stomp stomp stomp. She never looked around and noticed things. He could get away with murder and she wouldn't notice anything because she'd be watching a movie on her laptop. Zexion sat in his room and fumed silently about the chaos and uselessness of his mother, as teenagers are wont to do, and that was nice, for a while. But then that quiet deadness settled itself between his shoulders again. He imagined great wings of apathy, spread far and prepared to fly him to to a land of mediocre places. Over mountains that were tall, but nothing ridiculous (they saved the good mountains for the boys who loved their mothers).

He must've been more tired than he thought.

His phone buzzed again, sparking a groan and a self-indulgent "Go the fuck away, society." He flipped it open to see that Axel was continuing their conversation quite one-sidedly.

'_so that soph, rikku, totally had a pregnancy scare. she was freaking out + for some reason felt like telling me. she's only like 15 or 16. creepy, huh'_

Axel was the only person who ever texted him on a somewhat regular basis. Sora hated the very idea of it – said it was impersonal, and disconnected, reducing someone to two-hundred characters on three square inches of screen. And of course, if Sora did something, Riku was doing it. Zexion didn't know which of them copied the other, or if they switched off, but he'd taken to calling them 'the twins' last year because of it. One of his better moments, because the nickname had spread with the help of Larxene.

Larxene.

_There_ was a thought.

When you were around Larxene too much, you started to think that certain things were really normal. Like not caring about anybody. And like it was okay to insult anyone and pick on their sensitivities, so long as they didn't pick on yours. It was funny, how she called Sora and Riku 'gaybo' and 'ass pirates' for no real reason but Zexion's one question ("How did you do on the math midterm?") had her spiraling into a wave of privacy and anger. "It's none of your fucking _business_! God, Zexion, all you ever do is talk about grades and tests like it's the only thing that matters. Why don't you get your _own _fucking _life_?"

That was funny, wasn't it? You could sit around and be as mean as you wanted to other people and tell them to man up when they got upset if you'd never been on the receiving end.

_What else matters, Larxene? Because I've been looking for eighteen years, and I haven't found shit._

Larxene was a terrible girl, but she had Marluxia to make up for that, at least.

Zexion _fwumped_ down in a chair facing his window, absently toying with the strap on his cellphone. He had maybe half an hour until he had to leave, and that sure didn't seem like a short time when he was as listless as he was. He stared out the window, and he wished it would rain.

He opened the phone again, and gazed at the message. It hadn't changed, of course, but he felt like he'd glean something more from it if he kept looking. As if it would be suddenly and miraculously revealed to him why teenagers had to talk about everything that was on their minds.

His eventual reply was terse. _'So? That's her business. It's a stupid problem to have but I don't see why I should care.'_

And again, the reply came in a matter of minutes. _'see what I mean? you're super pissy today'_

_'I would think that regardless of my mood. She made poor decisions, and I'm sure she's had a difficult enough time without gossip.'_

Having never been pregnant himself, Zexion couldn't exactly sympathize with the situation. It was a purely selfish interest – if Axel could mock and gossip about someone behind her back, what was to stop him from doing so to Zexion? He was an advocate of letting things go – of never letting them affect him in the first place. If you let something pass right through you, you didn't have to get rid of a feeling by blabbing it to somebody else. But then, that was unfair to the majority of the world, which felt emotions fully. Not these dulled, disappointed facsimiles like damp pulses in the back of his stomach.

_Oh, I guess I'm just a special snowflake then, aren't I?_

He sighed, and began checking the time with renewed fervor. A short walk, the train, then the orchestra and getting to be around one of the few truly tolerable people he knew. A rejuvenation, of sorts; a recharging of his confidence, despite that the traffic cop hadn't emailed him, and Axel tolerated him, and Larxene said he had no life. Lexaeus was a saint, and a god on the cello, and he knew the value of a look, a smile, and silence.

* * *

Trains were always an adventure. They invited some of the strangest examples of human contact Zexion had ever been privy to. He had seen people at this very stop offer to help a newcomer countless times with buying a prepaid ticket from the machines, and at the same time seen people sit on opposite ends of a bench as if they wanted nothing more than to avoid each other. The kicker, of course, was that he had no idea what to do about it – the alternatives were outlandish and odd. To see an empty bench with a middle-aged man sitting at one end and go and sit next to him, or even in the middle, instead of the other end, seemed somehow forbidden.

Zexion loved the insecure ones. They were usually middle-aged women and teenagers, but they came in all sorts. The kind that tried very, very hard to look as if they were intelligent, productive members of society, regardless of the fact that most of them were. Today a typical housewife type was sitting on the bench at the very end, occasionally glancing down the tunnel to watch for two lights and a screech to come out of the darkness. She had her prim, ballet-flat feet crossed at the ankles, and she was holding a book open. But oh, she hadn't had the practice Zexion had had of showing strangers you were doing something intelligent. He could spot her from a mile away. She held it open so carefully, and looked up every few seconds at the people around her. In ten minutes of waiting, she never once turned the page.

It was a Friday, and it was nearly five o'clock, but thank God Zexion was heading inbound towards the city – just the opposite of the throngs of people trying to get home. While he certainly didn't get a train to himself, he had enough room to stand with the cello strapped to his back. He paid quickly and shuffled inwards, flashing fake smiles at the people he shoved past until he got to a place with enough standing room. He grabbed a metal bar on the back of one of the seats (which were, in typical Friday fashion, all occupied).

A girl with curly brown hair was texting on her smartphone, a book open in her lap. He almost laughed when he saw the author's name at the top of the left hand page: Charles Dickens. She couldn't have been more than fifteen pages in, and already giving up and texting her friends, probably to find out where they'd all meet up. After all, it was a Friday. The proper teenagers were out doing irresponsible things and dating each other. He snorted.

Apparently this got her attention, but the brunette paused in her texting to glance up at him with wide eyes and a slightly gaping mouth. "Oh, sorry," Zexion said. "Sorry."

He was apologizing for making a noise three feet from her head. She gave him a brief smile and went back to her texting. What the fuck was _normal_ about this? But he always landed on the same realization. When he bumped knees with the boy standing next to him and hastily apologized for that, he lamented it. It seemed incredibly depressing to have to be sorry for every accidental brush, or noise, or cough. But the alternative wasn't better, was it? To have people bumping your knees and stepping on your toes all the time.

Oh, how wonderfully fucking poetic. He couldn't wait to outgrow this age.

Zexion kept his eyes trained carefully on the window, half asleep, and avoided meeting anyone's gaze by accident. Three uncomfortable, rocking stops later and he pushed his way past the now-thicker crowd with a thousand "Oh, sorry"s and barely managed to jump down to the platform with his cello before the doors closed and the train pulled away. He stood for a second and watched it, met eyes with the housewife with the book, still reading that same page. Because, oh, she was smart if she read books, right? People would think she was smart, right?

When the screech of straining metal had faded away he headed for the street and made his way to rehearsal. There would always be people who wanted to be thought of as better than they were. Like him.

* * *

Lexaeus, a ringer who only showed up for half the rehearsals due to the constraints of college and not needing to spend nearly as much time as the high schoolers, was seated in the chair next to him.

"Hey," Zexion greeted him, sitting down and unlocking the latches on his case.

"Mm." Lex didn't talk much. Or maybe he just didn't talk much in orchestras.

"You wouldn't believe the week I've had," he said, smiling weakly because Lexaeus was the only person who knew that was a joke, coming from him.

"Do tell."

But the conductor walked in then, slightly disgruntled and with his score in vague disarray, which Zexion took as a strong hint that horsing around wasn't going to be tolerated for much longer. "The short version is that teenagers are total maniacs," he muttered, and quickly sat down to put his music in score order.

Lexaeus only smiled, gave Zexion a sympathetic pat on the back, and started to tune.

* * *

For Zexion, there was a Zen art to orchestra rehearsals. Perhaps not in the traditional sense of the word, since he'd never bothered to look it up in the dictionary, but it was calm and meditative. There was a general consensus among about seventy-five people in the room that there was a time and a place for chatter, and this was not it. He was allowed to – justified in – and expected to – remain silent.

Very occasionally, he would take to heart the words of the conductor in his more loose interpretations of the music. "You have to understand what the composer was thinking when he wrote this," he said. "He wasn't just trying to write a pretty twinkly melody here, no, he's British, and in the nineteenth century there was this element of fantasy around the British countryside – "

Ah, fairies. Of course. Why not. Sometimes conductors asked things of the orchestra that left them clueless, but Zexion often thought that if only he kept the image in mind and played how he always did, it got the conductor to leave him alone. This was his approach to most things: do not succeed in truth; succeed only in being left alone.

The Zen art was in the attention span. There were long stretches of time where only one section, one part, was being rehearsed, or only the second violins, or the whole group was receiving a lecture – but he never knew just how long they might last. Any minute he might get dragged back in, asked to provide the lilting undercurrent in steady and constant off-beats. So for those times of quiet, he had to keep his thoughts reigned in, and restrained enough that he could afford one ear for the next demand for cellos. Not that he ever went too terribly far in his mind. But now he was more firmly rooted. He kept himself amused with the nervous leg-crossing of the flutes, the horrendous bright pink laces of somebody's sneakers, and the mended rip in Lexaeus's jacket. He smiled when he thought of Lex flexing and ripping it like the Hulk. He was so large and so quiet, most people assumed he was stupid.

He must have seen Zexion staring, because Lexaeus looked at him questioningly. Zexion shook his head, motioning to the rip, and pretended he desperately needed to get a pencil out of his backpack so he wouldn't have to make eye contact.

"Trumpets from letter C."

Of course, small noises were acceptable – coughing, clearing your throat, emptying a spit valve if you played a wind instrument, and placing a pencil on a stand. But all in all, the disinterested parts of Zexion's mind agreed, it was a very good system by virtue of justifying his complete silence and careful people-watching.

"What pick-up? You start on beat – oh, no, uh, of course, what I meant by letter C is letter D. Yes. Haha. Play now, laugh at me later. One, two – "

Sometimes, he fancied himself a predator. Not hunting anything in particular. Just wary and observant the way emotional people couldn't be. He knew his conclusions were often unsettling, and that most people would disagree with him because they simply hadn't applied their thinking this way before. But it was things like the woman on the train with her sad little book, or the first violin in ballet flats whose parents probably wouldn't allow her to wear heels – so she compensated with flashy sparkles and an illusory skirt. And the trumpet-player in the very back row, who looked miserable in his ill-fitting suit, probably just come from a formal school occasion and more at home in a hoodie and jeans.

"Watch me, _watch_ me! This little baton isn't making the music, you are. You know how stupid I look if I'm conducting a completely different tempo than you're playing?"

It was worse things than that, too. He could spot insecurities and overcompensations, false prides and cover-ups. The whole world was his subtle soap opera, and he had only ever cared for documentaries. He felt sick to his stomach sometimes, that he couldn't turn off his judgment, his perhaps cruel dismissals of people who tried just as hard as he did to blend in.

He wound some of his hair around a finger, glancing at a clarinetist who was fingering his part quite loudly, breathing through the instrument just enough to produce a harsh, whispery sound, but not enough for music. How rude. If he had cared a whit for musical integrity, he would have been angry.

"No talking, please, no talking while I rehearse the trumpets. Thank you."

Still twirling that piece of hair, he switched his depressing train of thought to Demyx, the traffic cop. He had not emailed Zexion in the days between their first forays into friendship. Zexion, telling himself it was his streak of independence but fully aware it was his own insecurity, had not asked Demyx's email. Even if he had had it, he doubted he'd have to courage to take the chance and make first contact.

But no, no, this was not a good precedent to set. For all he knew, this spelled the fate of his interactions in college life, four months from now. If he could not make good first impressions he would be alienated from his peers, and he would be robbed of study partners or people from whom to get notes, those who would relay important news to him. Zexion had been excluded from loops before. It had been unpleasant.

"That sounds better, much better. It's not perfect, but practice and we'll have it for the concert. Can I have everybody from letter D, please?"

He was distantly grateful for the biological instinct which told him to seek social acceptance. A hundred thousand years ago, he imagined it would have kept him from becoming a hermit and getting eaten by a lion. Now, it was a somewhat outdated electric collar which stung him every time he tried to withdraw.

Oh, shit. Where was letter D? He faked his way with the usual off-beats of this movement and searched frantically. He found it, blended, and let his thoughts drift again. Being on the same part as the ever-reliable Lexaeus had the benefit of letting him do all the counting.

Well, so he didn't get a follow-up from the cop. So what? There were better, more intelligent people in the world. There always were. The world was full of other people seeking social acceptance, though they might not have known just why, not with the sociopathic certainty of Zexion Gillespie. It could not be so hard, could it, to find some like him?

"Hn. You know, let's try speeding it up. I'm on the low end of the given tempo range here, barely going at one-twenty."

_That's nice_, thought Zexion with a venom he could never put into his real voice. _Thanks for sharing._

* * *

The most curious thing – Roxas was right where he had left him, when Zexion got back from rehearsal. He was sitting on the stairs, texting one-handed, with his hood drawn up over his head.

"Have you been here this whole time?" Zexion asked, shifting the case on his back and checking his watch. Seven thirty. He'd left four hours ago, and it was beginning to get quite dark.

Roxas jumped and looked up at him, clicking his phone shut and sliding it into his pocket. "Yeah," he said. "Why?" He started to play with the edge of his sleeves again.

"I dunno," Zexion said. "You've got a good attention span, for a thirteen-year-old. If you've been sitting out here this long, I mean."

"Oh." Roxas pulled back his hood. "Yeah. I guess."

"Is everything okay?" Zexion asked suddenly, and with no real reason for doing so besides a vague and groundless worry. But Roxas only gave him a strange look and raised his eyebrows.

"I'm fine," he said quickly. "Everything's fine. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing, no reason. Are you sure you're not waiting for something?"

"It's just a nice night. That's all. Jesus, _Mom_," he laughed.

Zexion laughed too, uneasily and with a little spark of anger in his stomach. Why would he even bother doing something like that? Why presume to know when something was wrong with someone else? He could barely tell when something was wrong with _himself_. He'd seen Roxas upset over school or his social life plenty of times, and this wasn't how he acted, sitting on the porch twiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie on a warm June night. Nobody knew the mind of a thirteen-year-old, Zexion told himself. They did strange things like sit on the porch for four hours, wearing a sweatshirt in the summer, playing with their sleeves. Zexion gave Roxas a curt goodbye, and headed inside to check his email instead of waiting for a response.

* * *

After gently laying his cello against the wall of the living room, Zexion toed off his boots and headed for the kitchen to soothe the frustrating hunger in his belly. He opened the fridge to discover that he was in luck - his parents must have ordered Chinese food, because there were a few cartons in the fridge and one of them was unopened. It was usually a given in the Gillespie household that the family ate at about six o'clock, six thirty at the latest, but another reason for Zexion to love Fridays was that after tip-toe meditation at rehearsal he got home late enough to eat dinner by himself, and at his own leisure.

So he grabbed the carton, didn't bother to heat it up, and got a pair of chopsticks out of the drawer. In his room, he began to pick out all the decorative chives on the top of his food while waiting for his laptop to resuscitate. A good day, over all. No truly crippling emotional situations. Only a few blips, with Axel and Roxas, but they would forget.

(They always forgot.)

With a gentle and deadened nervousness, he logged into his email account, watching the progress bar stall while he slurped rice noodles. Oh, fucking hell. Fourteen messages? It had better all be spam; Zexion wanted to be done with people for the week. He wanted to watch a movie, eat dinner, and not do his homework.

Ohhhh, fucking hell. It was not all spam.

The spam there was was arguably the most entertaining element of the whole collection. With subject titles like "Help Spread Kindness in Your Community" and "Five Dollars Can Help Save a Wolf" (with a nervous follow-up titled "Did you get my wolf message?") and, alarmingly, "Wow Him in Bed With These Tips and Tricks", Zexion began to wonder exactly how he'd been signed up on the mail list for any of these things.

And Demyx.

From "Demyx Darison", to "Zexion Gillespie," subject title "Hey (this is Demyx)".

_Hey!_

_I totally tried to wait the requisite four days or whatever, but I have no willpower so I'm sending this now. My friend's girlfriend bailed on their weekend plans so he gave me a couple of tickets to that new Pixar movie, which I guess he was planning on seeing with her. Do you wanna come with me?_

_Also, I just realized that this sounds about as plausible as "Oh I just happened to be in the neighborhood and felt like dropping by your house" but I'm being honest about this situation, scout's honor. Movie's Saturday night at noon...so I'll be coming off of a double shift...but whatever. TMI, I know._

_Thanks!  
Demyx_

Zexion wondered if Demyx knew that the "dropping by your house" excuse usually applied to people in romantic relationships, but decided not to worry about it (it was as easy as deciding not to about these things, if you were Zexion). Because it was the only email with a time constraint, he felt obligated to reply, and sent Demyx a short affirmative and a question about which theater, and whether it was train-accessible so he didn't have to bum a ride or borrow his parents' car.

What an oblivious little thing.

* * *

At ten o'clock, Zexion heard a noise outside, and looked out his window to discover that Roxas was only now heading back upstairs. He had the hood of his checkered sweatshirt drawn up over his face, and his sleeves drawn down low, and he opened the door real slow and quiet and careful.

But Zexion figured most thirteen-year-olds were weird and sat down to watch a movie.

* * *

Watching widely-accredited movies was a bad idea. If reviews from well-known sources claimed a movie was heartfelt, touching and realistic, then its purpose to Zexion was usually alienation. More often than not, he didn't understand anybody's motivations for anything, got embarrassed during the moment of heartbreaking honesty, and fast-forwarded to the comic relief.

He wondered if sociopath was a little strong, for what he was. It wasn't that Zexion felt nothing and all of the time. He had emotions, but they were underwhelming and numb. Profound, but numb. They never seemed to fit the situation. He felt as if he were spending his whole life wrapped in a thin sheet of nylon. He could see out and they could see in, but nothing penetrated, and nothing could be touched.

That was the best way he could think of it. Cut off, choked, fully aware of his brokenness and knowing he should feel remorseful. But with most of the person taken out of him, all that was left was a sort of tired feeling.

Zexion believed he had never felt anything fully, and this was mostly true. All he had ever felt underneath his nylon cover, watching the world pretend he was normal, telling him how to feel and letting his weak facsimiles for emotions pass as well as the real thing - all he had ever really felt was lonely.

But on the bright side, Zexion was smart enough to realize that that was one thing he had in common with everyone around him.


	4. Closed the doors of my ribcage

A/N: HAHAHA I'm such a hypocrite.

Every year I'm like "I'm gonna post something awesome on my birthday!" and I never do. What's more depressing is that I started this on my birthday _last year,_ and it's had...two updates since then? Three counting this one?

Maaaan, it's a good thing I got that magnum opus thing out of the way before all this stuff started getting so hectic.

Edit: FF, whatchu doin' to my formatting, you silly goose.

* * *

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.  
**- W. Somerset Maugham**

* * *

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Zexion lay down backwards on his bed with his feet on the pillow. He stared at the popcorn ceiling and thought about nothing at all, really. He waited for feelings to slam into him like a wave – given maximum surface area and the power of gravity, some were bound to land on his body eventually.

Alone was a feeling to Zexion. It was spread with a thin knife over his stomach, and it quivered. He wanted a place to stick, let linger.

Maybe he would become a psychologist.

And spend his days surrounded by people? Hardly a good option.

Zexion had always felt a sort of muted pity for psychologists, and a sort of admiration. Being responsible for someone else's sanity was terrifying; what if you screwed up? Misdiagnosed? Everyone would rely on you to fix the suicidal people and the depressed people and the crazy people, and what if you couldn't tell the difference between a hopeless cause and one you weren't good enough for? He was terrified that if he ever became a psychologist, he'd proclaim a suicidal man to be cured. And when the inevitable happened it would be his fault – because it was his job, to fix people like that.

He could hardly imagine being responsible for anything. People always made mistakes; best to keep the stakes as low as possible. He was a boy with few ambitions.

Maybe he'd care for fish. Nobody cared if fish died. He could fuck it up gloriously and just replace them all, and they'd never notice.

Numb, Zexion drummed his fingers against his stomach and waited for the sun to rise and the heat to become unbearable.

Another thing he couldn't understand was all this drama people put themselves through – television had provided him with a full set of socially acceptable morals, as dictated by gruff murder detectives. You never made sacrifices. You could have it all if you shouted loud enough. The other side was the wrong side. You can't kill one to save ten.

Most importantly: it was better to feel pain than to feel nothing at all.

He was just being contrary, probably. He'd seen the message so many times that he decided to do the opposite, and somebody would have to see it and care enough about him to set him right. Ha, ha, ha.

Zexion didn't feel pain; he felt nothing at all. He kept waiting for the ice to break on the thin frozen tundra that was his mind, but it went too deep.

"I," he told the ceiling, "am fucking melodramatic, and I'm going to take a bath."

* * *

The bath didn't help. Normally he could enjoy them, he'd sit in the tub while it filled and relish the surface tension that rose over dry skin, and he'd close his eyes and stop thinking. Today something was off – the heat, maybe, or his noontime promise to a stranger. At any rate he sat cross-legged and stared at the water in front of his legs. He stuck his face under it and blew bubbles out his nose.

What movie were they even going to see? He had no idea; he hadn't even looked up the name. But he was glad it was a movie, because nobody talked during movies. You could both sit there and share an experience without having to contribute anything, and once it was done you had something to talk about. Not that he'd have anything to say. But he could make something up. It was never hard, for him.

He soaped up and washed down, suddenly sick of the bath and its lack of distraction.

Movies – television – books – they must have made sense to most people. People were selfish, Zexion knew that; they liked to see things reflect their own selves. So pop culture must have made sense to them. And he was the outlier. So he was going to go see a movie and he would find it amusing, but wholly unsatisfying, and it wouldn't leave an impression and everybody would talk about it for weeks and weeks while he stood dumbly on the sidelines wondering why it was such a breakthrough.

Of all things, _movies got under his skin._

Zexion toweled off his hair limply, hoping he hadn't woken his parents up, and went to go get dressed.

_Here's another chance, boy-o, said the nasty part of his mind. __Dress to impress. This guy thinks you're in **college. So you'd better dress like it.**_

Not that he had much experience with college kids, anyways. Not up close. But he shuffled into jeans that were a little tighter than usual, and same with the shirt, because that would make him look bigger. Wearing oversized clothing all the time probably made it look like he'd shrunk. He pulled a black hoodie over his head and went to go stand in front of the mirror.

"Jesus," he groused. "I don't even want to do this. Fucking senioritis."

Zexion sighed. "Adolescence: do monumentally stupid things for the sake of social acceptance!" he said, holding his arms out from his sides and watching the sleeves droop. "Now in exciting new flavors like hipster and emo. New look, same bitter emotional scarring."

"Zexion?" his mother's call was muffled by two doors and a hallway, thickened with sleepiness, but it sent shivers of irritation down his spine.

"What is it."

"Are you all right? Who are you talking to?"

Wow. _Wow._

At eight in the morning, just one word from his mother was enough to ruin Zexion's mood for an hour. Who the fuck did she think he was talking to? His secret girlfriend who snuck into his room? His mother was fundamentally _incapable of drawing the most __obvious conclusions. She only ever asked him if something was wrong when he was feeling fine. He didn't understand how she'd come so far in life with such a fundamental misunderstanding of social interactions._

Of course, he wasn't really one to talk, but at least he could fake it.

"I'm fine, Mom." Which was his default response.

"...okay." There was an undertone of that same _no need to be so snippy Zexion, _but he ignored it. God dammit. Sometimes he asked himself why she could derail everything he was thinking with two needlessly invasive words, and he realized she wasn't awful, just human and paranoid, but he couldn't stop finding her so...awful.

With a quick stride to the entrance of his room, Zexion shut the door a little more forcefully than necessary and slammed the chain lock in place.

He pulled the blanket off his bed, taking extra care when it caught on the corner, and booted up his laptop. This early on the weekend, nobody was online – IM was virtually deserted, social networking sites sparse. Not that he'd ever had any particular affection for either medium. They were more chances to interact with people, and so they were more chances to slip up or do something awkward or feel alienated. He could be one paranoid motherfucker when it came to stuff like that.

Maybe he was just scared of rejection? Fuck it, he knew he was scared of rejection. Everyone was.

Zexion Gillespie was...nobody's best friend. And nobody's priority. Not Axel's. Not Larxene's. Not Lexaeus's. Not his own mother's. Hell, most of the time he was hardly his own priority. That was usually okay, and he didn't mind or anything, but he'd be lying if he told himself it never mattered.

He had almost four hours until he had to meet that guy at the movies. What would he even do with the time?

Stay here? Jesus. With his mom clunking around the house like an elephant?

No, his best option was to get out of his own head for a while, so he resolved to go outside. He'd get breakfast somewhere cheap and just do...something, until he had to go. It was an appealing plan: he could eat whatever he felt like, go to the park when nobody would be there, pretend he was occupied with his phone if he made accidental eye contact with anyone. Yeah. Okay.

* * *

Zexion spent almost three hours in one chair in a coffee shop, firmly entrenched in his book. He'd finished the autobiography ages ago. Without getting the chance to go to the library, though, he was pretty much limited to all the books in his house – which meant he got stuck with with a stupid Alice in Wonderland reimagining he'd picked up at a book sale sophomore year. The story was full of wars and romance and flimsy excuses for things that glowed, but he had no nostalgia for the original book; this was all the same to him.

He nursed an iced coffee, then an egg sandwich, then a sugar cookie. Zexion could take a gloriously long time to eat food – bite by tiny bite. But he could only waste time for so long before the baristas probably got annoyed, so at about eleven he high-tailed it out of Disaffected Liberal Arts Major central and ambled toward the cinema.

Technically he should get on the train, and get off at the next stop – but he knew where he was headed. At least, he knew what street the theater was on, and it was the street he was currently on, and he knew which direction to go.

Besides. Walking helped him think. You could stay inside your head while you walked, and once that got too depressing you could stare at the things you passed by.

Sometimes, Zexion couldn't shake the feeling that the whole world was placating him. Everything he said, thought, did – all of him in his entirety was an embarrassment, but everyone felt too awkward to call him out on it. He felt like he was being forever condescended upon. And who would be right, in that situation? Him or the whole rest of the world? It was hardly a fair comparison. Zexion was doomed to be a useless outcast. Every conversation he weighed in on, his opinions were unwanted; every experience he shared, they were waiting for him to shut up; every argument he made, all anyone thought was 'oh honey, that's cute, but go back to your sandbox now'. How sad, Zexion. Nobody can stand you and you won't leave them alone.

Did conceding to an argument make you the bigger person, or did it make you weak? If the other person didn't know you were letting them win? He'd been talking to Larxene – he'd been talking to Larxene, because she told him things for whatever reason. Maybe she figured he didn't have anyone to spill her secrets to. He'd been talking to Larxene about altruistic suicide. But Larxene was a girl, full of emotions, so when he'd said the words "anthropologically speaking" and "it would be to the advantage of the tribe if", she'd gotten so mad. That couldn't be right; for one thing, she'd watched a documentary in psyche and none of those claims were substantiated, and anyways he was just taking the most controversial stance he could because he liked to feel superior.

He'd said okay and left and now it was two days later, and it was the first time he'd thought of it since.

Maybe he'd just agreed to watch a movie with Demyx the Traffic Cop because he didn't have the spine to make a decision for himself. A decision had been presented to him, and he'd gone the route that would hurt the least feelings.

So much for being a sociopath. Fucking weakling.

No – no, he was only being reasonable; he had no opinion on the matter and took the most logical step.

He couldn't shake the feeling, though. That he only had friends because people were being polite to him. Or that he...perceived things differently.

Which is why he was so hung up on this Demyx thing. Demyx had...no reason to be doing what he was doing. He had no obligation to be polite to Zexion, to befriend him or get something from him; he had no reason to interact with him at all. He couldn't help wanting to believe in the earnestness of this man – Zexion was so distrustful, so paranoid, lonely and disconnected that this was the only hand he would accept. If someone had no reason to do something, he was doing it because he wanted to, because he honest to God wanted to go see a movie with Zexion the sociopath, and that could be trusted – because it wasn't asked for.

Zexion laughed, then, inside his head. What a hypocrite! He never extended himself or did something only because he wanted to. If everyone in the world were like him, nobody would have any friends, ever. But the world was not like him. That was why Zexion even had friends, however good they were.

Zexion was a sociopath. He and the world had nothing in common.

It went on like this – Zexion thought and thought and thought, and while he walked he noticed nothing of his surroundings. He bumped into strangers and failed to apologize in time; he sped past elaborate graffiti and ignored the homeless men with cups of change.

Elementary school, he mused, had really fucked him up. His was so small – each grade had maybe forty kids – that there was only ever the one clique of boys. And when you were like Zexion, awkward and with a distaste for sports, you tended to get...not ignored, exactly. Not ignored. But...forgotten. Unwanted. Nobody's first pick: if a table could seat four kids, he'd be the fifth one who got booted to sit on the ground. Because he wasn't like them.

_Yeah, you're just a special fucking flower, aren't you?_

He snorted. Elementary school had begun his paranoia, middle school had exaggerated it, and high school added layers of complexity and false hope to the pot of depressed bullshit that was his brain.

He was so small.

Zexion walked right past the theater and down another block before he realized. He hurried back, with his eyes on the ground, and sat down on the steps to wait for Demyx to show up. He switched his music to something mindless, quiet, droning, without words, and he sat on the rain-damp concrete stairs and watched people filter in and out of a Barnes and Noble across the street. Pulling his hood up, Zexion started to feel like Roxas on the steps to his house – sitting, waiting for something he wouldn't tell anyone, closed up and so, so little.

* * *

"Oh! Hey, almost didn't see you there!"

Blinking himself out of his stupor, Zexion was surprised to see Demyx had escaped his attention. He supposed he'd been used to the guy in a police uniform – civilian clothes made him melt right back into the scenery. He took a second to look him up and down. You could tell a lot about someone from their clothes. At least, in high school you could. The theater kids tried a little too hard to look disheveled; their sweaters sagged perfectly over one shoulder and boots unlaced just the right amount. Oblivious nerds wore jeans that exposed their ankles when they sat down, jocks wore shorts even in winter, girly girls wore lace and leggings, musicians wore hats, and class clowns wore shirts with ironic sayings. You could tell a lot about someone from their shoes, too. Zexion would know. He spent an awful lot of time looking at the ground.

Demyx just had on a black rain coat, some well-fitting jeans, and a pair of dirty sneakers. Like he'd grabbed whatever he saw handy after a shower, with no thought or rhyme or reason – Zexion envied that, a little.

"Oh," he said. "Hey."

"You all right?"

"What?" Had he been _crying _or something? "Uh, yes?"

"You looked so startled for a second there," Demyx laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. His hand was warm and expansive. "Zoning out?"

"Yeah."

"You do that a lot," he said, running a hand through shards of damp hair. Zexion's mouth was a little open, and he watched that hand with a barely concealed fascination. A part of him itched, almost, to trace it – but that was quickly stifled. Wants were weird and undignified.

"I guess. Dunno, maybe I didn't sleep too well last night," he said. He stood up and smiled at Demyx, a fake smile that hurt the sides of his mouth and pulled a little on the strings around his heart. He never smiled at a person and meant it. He never fucking meant it. People smiling back were like a constant tally of social approval, not really human things that cared and – and he still had to get through this movie with Demyx, who thought he was normal.

Zexion sometimes thought he wanted to take a break from real life. A real, proper sort of a break. Everyone would leave him alone, even his thoughts, and he'd come back new and shiny and ready to try again.

There was a double door leading into the theater, but Demyx only opened one side of it, heaving it back and nodding his head for Zexion to go first. He followed right behind, real close, and put that warm hand on Zexion's shoulder again before heading to the ticket machine.

"My friend got the tickets online," he said, taking a creased printout from the theater website out of his pocket. "I'll just be a sec. Have you seen this one before?"

"No," Zexion frowned, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. Complex lattices of pipes and long iron beams had been his friend since fifth grade gym. Things got stuck up there in the rafters, like balloons and balls and ambitions. It was like a treasure hunt where you didn't have to look anyone in the eyes. "I um," he said, looking at Demyx's back as he printed out the tickets, "Don't go to the movies often. I usually just wait for it to come out on DVD or on TV or something."

"Cheapskate!"

Zexion snorted, coming up behind him. He stuffed his hands in his windbreaker pockets. "My friends don't really like going out to the movies."

"What _do _you like to do? Wait, don't tell me – you sit around playing Brahms and talking about new scientific discoveries."

"What?" Brahms? The fuck? The machine spat out the actual tickets, and for the second before Demyx took them they looked like rectangular pink tongues.

"Nothing. That's what _my _friends do – the ones that go the conservatory, I mean." He wrinkled his nose at some gum crushed into the ratty red carpet, and headed towards the clerk. "I have normal friends who play videogames all day – what _do_ you do?"

"Uh," Zexion had an answer and all, but the ticket lady – large, tanned, with an ill-fitting red vest – was right there ripping off parts of their tickets. She didn't need to hear what he was saying. Not if it wasn't...planned.

(He could do that – line up a conversation so the right accidental eavesdropper heard it. Like social prowess was a game where you could unlock achievements.)

(Fucking monster.)

Demyx smiled at her, and accepted the ticket stubs, offering one to Zexion.

"I guess not much," he confessed as they walked away. He cradled the stub in his hand. "We don't hang out too often – usually we'll go online or mess around in parks."

"Really?" Demyx seemed genuinely interested. They were heading for the theater, under a much closer, blacker ceiling with posters all over the walls and the rich smell of popcorn turning Zexion's stomach. There was practically no line at the concessions stand. "Who?"

"Huh?"

"Who do you hang out with? I might know them."

Hm. The truth, or a lie – Zexion considered the merits of each. If he lied to Demyx and gave him names he didn't know, it would be suspicious. He might ask around – "You ever heard of a guy named Axel?" and the confrontation would be awkward at best. Zexion hated it when he committed a social faux pas. Made a joke nobody laughed at, or got shrugged off by people he was socializing with. It took him down a peg. Plus, that was what people always did in movies. They came up with silly, lame lies, perpetuated them, had to go to huge lengths to keep up appearances, and they always got found out. Movies like that were so...trite. You always knew exactly what was going to happen: the big reveal, the disappointment, the few minutes of lonely deadness before the main characters get back together.

The truth held different consequences. Best case scenario, Demyx smiled it away, couldn't care less, thought the miscommunication funny. Worst case scenario – he got mad and stormed off. But Zexion at least got left alone.

He shrugged, and puffed up his chest and got ready to be honest. The way he saw it, if he pissed Demyx off, then the most he had to suffer was one movie with somebody who stopped liking him. "I don't...actually go to the conservatory," he said. "I'm in one of the high school orchestras."

"No kidding?" Demyx paused, staring at the boxes of candy. "No kidding," he said again, quieter.

Zexion could feel whatever enthusiasm had been there get gently sucked out of the conversation. Demyx only stood there, watching the food with his lips sort of tight, sighing through his nose.

"You're really in high school?"

He felt like he should apologize for it. "Yeah, basically. Is that so shocking?"

"Dunno. You just seemed...older, I guess." He shook his head, and Zexion's hands twitched in his pockets. That was a real shame – he'd never wanted to touch someone before, just to see what it felt like, but if Demyx hated him now, then so be it. "What grade are you in?"

"I'm a senior."

"What, now?"

"...yes?" Zexion laughed, and glanced at the cashier of the concessions stand. He probably couldn't care less about this conversation, between two guys. "I graduate in a couple months. Turned 18 in January."

"_Oh! _Oh. That's...not so bad, then, is it?" Demyx heaved a big old sigh, and smiled a little. "I don't feel so creepy. Where're you going for college?"

"Local university." Creepy? Was it that weird for functioning adults to befriend highschoolers? Zexion supposed that for the adults it would be – after all, he didn't spend time with middle school kids.

It was a strange relief that Demyx didn't ask _which _university – not that Zexion wouldn't have told him – but instead, "Not moving too far, huh? That makes sense. We've got a lot of good stuff up here. I mean education, and other things, too."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. Plus, the one thing I knew about which college I was gonna go to...I mean, when I was deciding, I told my guidance counselor that it had to be somewhere that snowed sometimes."

Alien eyes spiraled ice down his spine, relentless and smiling, and Demyx opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by the vendor's "Can I get you anything?"

It took a few minutes to get food, so Zexion figured Demyx would've forgotten. Wrong again. "Snow, huh?"

"What?"

"Right before we got snacks. You said you wanted to go somewhere with snow."

"Oh." Which was a weird thing to say, and perhaps a little too honest, and you weren't supposed to do it when getting to know someone. Right. Zexion shook his head and resolved to be more careful. "Um, yeah, I guess. I mean I wasn't that serious about it – "

"No?" Demyx laughed. He seemed like the kind of guy who laughed all of the time, even when something wasn't funny, just because. "Aw. That was totally one of my things when I was applying to colleges. I said it's got to at least have a park or a forest or _something nearby, where it's not really crowded, or I'd go nuts, and there had to be seasons. I don't want to go where it's warm all the time."_

Zexion wondered if people had to apply to the police academy the way they applied to colleges, and if Demyx had planned on going to college, how did he end up a policeman? It was just a given, where he lived, that you went to college. Everybody did it.

There was something warm and old and false about a movie theater. Maybe it was that every single one he'd been to had crimson accents and carpeted floors. Demyx opened the theater door for him, so Zexion smiled and thanked him, and tried not to think too much that a forest and some snow would be a wonderful place to go to school.

It reminded him of all those conversations he heard people having in the hallways.

_The thing is, U of M has really, really good humanities – I mean my brother's friend went there, and **he **said that a letter of recommendation from the chair of the lit department will get you into like, anywhere for grad school. But their sciences are only so-so, I mean, they're pretty average, so if I want to be a lawyer it's fine but what if I go premed?_

_ULU is actually a really good school. The problem is people haven't heard of it, but it has small classes so you can get help from the professors and all._

He couldn't understand that. Maybe conversations like that were meant for people who knew what they wanted, set on trains without brakes destined for the eternal point B. Zexion didn't have a point B; he hardly had a point A. He didn't want much at all. Zexion just wanted a place to stick to, get his bearings straight, a place where the big things stayed mostly the same so he could deal with the little things. Dealing with more than one problem at a time was something he'd always had trouble with. There must have been a trick to it.

When they entered the theater, the most of the seats were occupied. There were single empty seats, of course. They served as buffers between different groups. That struck Zexion as a little sad, but he couldn't point out _why, exactly, it was sad that strangers didn't want to be adjacent._

Demyx, who couldn't care less, headed straight for the back of the theater. Good, Zexion thought; it would have strained his neck to sit in the front.

The movie left no impression, as expected. It had a nice soundtrack. Not music he'd be humming to himself in class any time soon, but nevertheless – pretty.

Sitting next to Demyx did leave an impression. Zexion didn't often go to the movies, and when he did, it was in large groups with people like Axel and Larxene who snorted loudly and leaned over to whisper hot-humid pop culture references to the lobe of his ear.

For one thing, Demyx didn't hog the middle arm rest, not even when Zexion left it unoccupied. He leaned back in his seat, one elbow crooked, head in his palm, twirling bits of hair. True, he might have been part of why Zexion couldn't focus on the movie – he was so much more interesting. Sincerity etched his movements. He was made of all these lines, such strange lines that came in vague undulations applied at points across his body. Soft curves of muscles on his arms, the bump of pectorals and a solid torso, bony knees, the swell of his calves diving into ankles. He was not like Axel, sticks tied together with string. Not like Lexaeus, who was so solid and broad and there, with thick fingers dancing on the strings.

What a bizarre version of grown-up.

He refused to act properly, that was the thing, he refused to sort his movements into a familiar category. Demyx should have been friendly, dopey, poorly-coordinated, always dropping things and laughing about it.

This wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. All it was, was it made determining the right reactions more difficult for Zexion.

Around his parents, Zexion was meek, unresponsive, quiet. He was not proud of intellectual achievements, and he did not ask for much. Being in his father's office was worse; he sat still like a carving, a person-shaped box left in the corner, not bothering anyone. With his school friends, Zexion was loud (as loud as he ever got), obnoxious and cruel. Different Zexions for different situations, all fine-tuned and adjusted to yield maximum positive results.

Demyx's question blew right past him when he opened up the door, grimacing at the thick fuzzy taste movie popcorn left in his mouth. "What?"

Snort. "What'd you think of the movie?"

"I don't know. It was okay, I guess."

"Wow. Aren't you just full of opinions."

Zexion shrugged. "I haven't really had time to process it."

"You process everything before you have an opinion on it?"

The clouds had gone away by now, melted into the sky and the bright sun. Bright spots of shine glinted off of everything – cars, sunglasses, shop windows – but Zexion just wanted to go home. He was done for the day. This was more than enough social interaction.

"Doesn't everybody do that?" he said to Demyx, who was wandering off toward the parking lot in front of the train station.

"I don't think so. Most people just go with their guts," he said.

Ah. Right. Their guts. Instincts. Zexion wasn't so much a fan of things like that, of impulses – you couldn't defend those to somebody who was questioning you. Logic was usually the safer choice, though it led to some unfortunate questions. (Logically, this movie had plot fallacies and poor special effects, but does that refute its true nature as a movie? Shit like that.)

He just settled for, "Seems arbitrary."

Demyx nodded, and began to unzip his raincoat. Zexion waited for a beaten t-shirt or a homey sweater to come out from underneath, something generic and well-worn, because Demyx seemed like that kind of guy. He seemed like the kind of guy who honestly, really believed that people didn't care how you looked.

He had a muscle shirt on. The kind with no sleeves – like an actual fucking muscle shirt to show off your arms, he had on one of those. The fuck? Zexion reeled a little at first, in disgust and awe. That was tacky, but damn did you have to be confident to wear one and not bat an eye. You had to be pretty sure you had arms worth showing off if you were gonna wear that.

A little male part of him squealed with jealousy. It wasn't _fair_, cops were supposed to be fat and pale and lumpy, they were meant to eat donuts and sit down all of the time. They had been less pronounced in the theater, under his jacket, but in the sunlight Demyx had muscles. They weren't big or frightening, but they were smooth stones set at places in his arm, dipping into shadow like Zexion's never had. He couldn't understand how Demyx had time for that, for purposeful exercise of his arms. Zexion was exhausted by the time he finished homework.

That was just..._unfair._

Now, Zexion didn't know where to look. The pavement was too obvious, his face meant eye contact, and his chest would just be _awkward._

"Hey...Zexion?"

"Huh?" He settled for a spot between Demyx's eyebrows. Some people had all the luck, born looking that way.

"Are you really alright? You've been – I mean I'm sorry if this is too personal – you've been really...quiet all day."

Uh-oh, Zexion. He's onto you. Do something. Fix it, run away, pretend you don't know what he's talking about. Nobody with arms like that wants to be friends with someone like you. What do you need any more friends for?

Demyx kept going. "Was it something I did, or – "

"No! I'm sorry, I'm just really tired," Zexion laughed and glanced at the train tracks. Knobbly weeds rose up between the metal, over and around the wooden planks. Tall grass lined the sides punctuated by dandelions. Plants on a train track – seemed strange.

"Oh, okay," said Demyx. He folded his rain coat over an elbow, crossed his arms and leaned against the brick wall. "Man. This isn't really how I planned it."

"Planned what?" It seemed pretty basic. Meet at the theater, go watch a movie, go home on the train, leave Zexion alone to mope in his room for a few hours. What was to mess up?

"Uhm," his voice quivered in a failed imitation of laughter. "Uh, never mind."

Demyx was only human. He was probably making a big deal out of something that didn't matter much – this kind of thing made it more important than it was, and he must know it. Zexion wanted to press him – "No, really. I'm curious." But would annoy him if their roles were reversed.

"Well, all right," he said.

The high-pitched squeal of a train keened from somewhere in the distance. Zexion supposed they'd miss this one.

Demyx breathed through his nose and swallowed, keeping his eyes trained ahead, away from the boy next to him. "You remember that conversation we had before? You know, random personal information? You told me how you were a really quiet kid..."

"Yeah. I remember." _I remember that you failed to understand the point entirely._

He said something else, but the train rolled in, growling metal thunder and echoing screeches. They waited, both of them, in silence as people boarded and it set off again.

"Mind if I have another one of those moments?" Demyx said.

"Sure."

He took his time about it. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, smoothed out his shirt, put his hands in his pockets and took them back out. Really, he took so long the moment had practically already passed when he started speaking, low tones that distracted Zexion from his words.

"This really isn't how I thought it would go in my head."

_Thought what would go, _Zexion wanted to ask, but he just went "Hn" and shrugged.

"Zexion?" What a weight this man could lend to his words.

"What is it?"

"I think you're – awesome." He winced. "No. I mean..." A big, heaving sigh. His voice shook. "I think you're beautiful and I want to kiss you. I just thought...I should...say that first."

Zexion stared at him, at his upturned smiling eyes, his nervous mouth, the pre-cringe of his spine.

...

_Fuck._

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckety _fuck fuck!_

This was not how it _worked!_

Nobody liked _Zexion. _Nobody liked Zexion Gillespie; Zexion Gillespie didn't like Zexion fucking Gillespie. The only time he'd thought about – about – that – was as a sort of social obligation, that it would be weird if he didn't, that he must be missing out on something that would make the songs of the radio make sense but he hadn't meant it.

Beautiful? Who calls another man _beautiful_? In the middle of a city at a train stop? Somebody looking to get shot by an eavesdropping hateful bigot. Beautiful wasn't even a word people used non-sarcastically. Besides, Zexion wasn't stupid. He'd seen himself in the mirror. He wasn't beautiful. He was little, and snub-nosed, and he still had a little baby fat under his jaw, and his eyes were too large, and his ears stuck out so he covered them with hair, and girls never looked at him twice, especially when he was near Axel. Zexion did not draw attention. He liked it that way. A part of him was terrified that if he were ever given the attention he craved, he'd become addicted to it. A ravenous attention monster whining and clawing at people to make them look at him.

He'd never had – you weren't supposed to just..._say it._

Not to another _guy. _Demyx didn't seem gay. And Zexion wasn't gay, either, he was the furthest thing – boys were immature and always forgot their homework and tried to write science fiction epics and liked all the Die Hard movies because they didn't understand real violence. If he had to be with someone, it had to be a girl, a quiet, dark one who knew when to leave him alone. The idea of kissing someone else, especially another guy, sweaty, smelly, greasy, sickened him more than a little.

And you weren't meant to just come out and _say it._

_How the fuck would you know._

He kept his face still as stone. Just stared at Demyx, as if he were waiting for him to continue, and tilted his head a little. Demyx swallowed.

"I'm really sorry, that was way too forward – and it's kind of weird, because when I thought about saying it I hadn't known you were only eighteen – anyways I know you probably don't, um, and it's just I liked a guy for a really long time and never said anything and now he's with somebody else and I don't want that to happen again, I was just sort of hoping this honesty thing that you would – " he cut himself off and whipped his head down, crossing his arms defensively.

But that same logic reared its ugly head. _It's of no consequence to me,_ thought Zexion_, __whether or not his advances are received. Why not go the happier route?_

"Ohh, God. Can you please say something." Demyx looked at him from under his eyelashes.

"I..." A mood change was easy enough, a quick clicking into place, a soft smile with his mouth just barely turned up and his eyes wrinkled at the edges. "I just wasn't expecting you to be so forward."

"So..." Demyx raised his head fully. "That's a maybe, then?"

Zexion shifted his smile and held his elbows. "I'm not much of a talker."

He let Demyx kiss him, standing there in front of the train station in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. His first proper kiss, technically. With a young police officer, off-duty, wearing a muscle shirt and jeans, just because he was so honest.

It felt like an age went by – he could hear cars in the distance, but they seemed so far. His world was a shaky one, just him and Demyx, careful lips lined up with his and probing, never going too far but imbued with the heavy sense that they wanted to. Just the pulsation of mouths. His heart pumped in his ears like helicopter blades.

He let himself be kissed, soft and sweet, and he felt sick to his stomach, but it made the other one happy.

Maybe that was the best he could hope for. After all, it wasn't like a relationship was ever going to bring him any joy. He may as well make somebody else feel something.

* * *

To be an adult is to be alone.  
- **Jean Rostand**

* * *

A/N: This story is full of emotional problems! Because I figured you didn't have enough of your own.

Please review? My life is full of suck and I need some old-fashioned cheering up. Or, you know, disappointed criticism.


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